


Warning

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Elsamaren Summer 2020 (Disney), ElsamarenSummer2020, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25368859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: The warnings that are passed to us in childhood through lullabies and fairy stories, we take to heart. Elsa's childhood was one of pain, but with Honeymaren by her side, the world can be brighter. She'll make sure it can. They both will. Written for Elsamaren Summer 2020.
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: Elsamaren Summer 2020





	Warning

**Author's Note:**

> I am incredibly proud of this piece and hope you will review. Thank you for your kindnesses as readers. Thank you.

Her mother’s voice was smooth as silk, and in the billows about her, the moon-sheened blankets with their hues like waters in an icy cavern – some rose-tinted, some blue, aurora-like, shining, dim, as the luminescence of the cavern’s walls – little Elsa saw the tumble of the river. It glided smoothly with her mother’s voice, ruffling with the playful inflection of tenderness like the ruffles of bedsheets and blankets, until the lyrics belied the silken tone and Elsa was in darkness. By that point, sleep was already settling over Elsa with its own form of darkness. Her mind could hardly process the darkness of the lyrics, the darkness of the waters swirling in the lower depths, but that other darkness – darker than sleep – subconsciously slipped into her heart…

_“Why do lullabies always have to have some terrible warning in them?”_

And it wasn’t just lullabies...

Never leave the path. Never turn the key to behold Bluebeard’s wives, their blank heads dangling from gashed necks, blood blooming over their chests like deathly flowers, the blood undried to dye the key, still flowing as though the corpses might yet choke and rasp in death-agonies that have already come and gone, as though their lifeless eyes might yet bulge and plead, blood oozing and misting the pearliness of their whites and making them to weep… weep to clear the mist of blood that will never be cleared, cannot be cleared, because there are no tears left in them to weep with, no voices left in them to sob and choke on their own life-giving blood… It is your fault for turning the key, little girl, young woman, young wife. Your fault. Those tears that will never flow weep for you, not in kinship, but in accusation, for the moral is sharp as Bluebeard’s blade…

Tears…

_She came in, but stood too close to the fire, so that her old rags began to burn, and she was not aware of it. The boy stood there and saw that. Should he not have put the flames out? Is it not true that he should have put them out? And if he did not have any water, then he should have wept all the water in his body out of his eyes, and that would have supplied two good streams with which to put them out._

Elsa had wept all the tears in her body at the age of eight, wept them over her sister in anguish, but the pretty streams did not extinguish the flames… and so she kept on weeping, weeping as a husk, broken, too many tears at such a young age, too many, broken, each sob racking her body, her pearly bones – if tears cannot spill, blood can – spilling like from the vacant eyes of Bluebeard’s wives…

She took the morals to heart, more to heart than was humanly possible. Your fault, little girl, young woman, your fault, your fault. Be the good girl you always have to be…

Gloves clung tightly. Don’t leave the path.

Don’t do this, for the sake of others. Do this, for the sake of others. Don’t, do. Don’t, do. Like the blows of Bluebeard’s sword shattering her skull.

Gloves fluttered heavenward atop the North Mountain – and for once, the good girl leaves the path, for once, the good girl refuses to submit to the moral and turns the studded sword not just on Bluebeard but on Perrault as well, defiance in its brilliance as she swings the saber back…

The siren-song guided her like a lullaby, but when she followed, she followed for herself, for answers – and when those answers showed her that the path-makers were hewing a path for her before she was even born, weaving her agency into their design – a gift, but for whom? for herself, yet unborn? no, for mama and papa – and if for her, then they knew who she was before she knew herself, then the declaration they were guides for her own agency and not determiners rang as hollow as the echoing reverberation of her icy gasp in Ahtohallan, trembling like a death-rattle in the bloody chamber… So many voices in authority that declared directly or indirectly that they knew her better than she knew herself, knew what was best, it will all work out in the end, just follow the voice as it soothes you, be the good girl…

But the voices all sang out in good intention, surely?

Good intention? Good intention still weaves gloves, good intention still declares, “Conceal it, don’t feel it,” as though the “it” were the saving grace, the magic word that absolves and puts the blame on you, your fault, little girl… as though the misguidedness of concealment, of not feeling your powers, is not still rooted in the words…

There’s a path for you, little one, and this time you need to be _grateful_ for it.

_Well, now they know! Let it go!_

Had she cringed in Ahtohallan when she saw herself on the North Mountain?

Had she really?

Maturity brings perspective – and yes, perhaps there was something of the exuberance of youth in her then, but… what in that exuberance was bad?

There was defiance on her lips upon the mountaintop.

With the coils of destiny about her like the shackles she splintered before smashing the dungeon wall and emerging upon the whirlwind of the frozen fjord, that defiance sang from her more strongly than the countless voices of the chorus, not a voice from without reaching in but a voice from within resounding…

The good girl leaves the path and makes a home for herself in the woods, Bluebeard’s own sword at her back, slick with his blood…

She finds a companion, skillful with a staff, and together, they settle in a goahti. But neither sword nor staff need they use against wolves, for wolf-smiles are less smug than the compilers that conjure them. Wolves-as-written are not wolves of the woods. Not even are they wolves of Arendelle. They are Morals of men pressing the orality out of things with their printing presses, that is all.

And when a child came to them and they set her in a crib Honeymaren carved with her own hands, Elsa and Honeymaren’s voices twined in softer songs.

Elsa had grown up in fear, fear ingrained that it took her years to unlearn.

And even as she unlearned it, the shame lingered so that she cringed at her first moment of defiance.

So entrenched was it that the shadows hung even upon her exultation.

Her daughter would grow up in liberty.


End file.
